Illinois state Representative Marty McLaughlin of Barrington Hills, one of the few Republicans in Springfield who voted for the Bears stadium package that failed to make it through the Senate, has put together his own straight business deal proposal and is announcing its specifics as the Bears inch closer to Hammond. McLaughlin joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to describe the plan and explain why he thinks it gives the Bears what they actually need while protecting taxpayers in ways the previous legislative effort never did.
McLaughlin said he watched the previous stadium package take shape from the cheap seats and was embarrassed as a business owner. He said the structure was convoluted and unworkable, and that the people trying to assemble it could not run a lemonade stand. His own proposal has two core components. The first is property tax certainty. The Bears purchased the Arlington Heights site for two hundred million dollars. Under his proposal, the assessed value would be negotiated upfront and then increase at two and a half percent annually for thirty years. That gives the Bears the predictability they need to take the project to private capital markets, which is what any serious business would require before committing to a stadium investment of this magnitude. The second component is a third-party independent audit organization that would verify annually that none of the taxing bodies in the affected area are cost-shifting expenses onto the tax revenue generated by the property. He said that kind of external accountability mechanism is essentially unprecedented in Illinois and directly addresses the legitimate taxpayer concern that these deals get picked apart over time.
On the state infrastructure investment of $1.2 billion, McLaughlin argued this is categorically different from subsidizing a stadium in the desert. The Arlington Heights project is not just a football venue. It is surrounded by a projected four billion dollars in hotel, restaurant, and entertainment development that would make it look like Rosemont on steroids, he said, and Rosemont has been a genuinely productive regional destination for decades. The infrastructure investment serves all of that development, not just the stadium itself, and unlike the Lion Electric plant in Joliet where Illinois threw away fifty million dollars of taxpayer money on a company that subsequently failed, the Chicago Bears are not going out of business anytime soon.
He said the proposal also calls out the Bears if they are not serious. It requires a minimum private investment of two and a half billion dollars from the team, which would make the Arlington deal economically superior to Hammond even accounting for the state’s infrastructure commitment. He said if they do not want a straight business deal on those terms, then that tells you something about whether they ever really wanted to stay.
On Pritzker’s selective principles regarding taxpayer money, McLaughlin pointed out that the governor’s office is simultaneously bragging about Rural King receiving state edge tax credits and infrastructure assistance for its expansion in Mattoon, a company doing two and a half billion dollars in revenue annually with an owner who is by any reasonable measure a billionaire, while lecturing everyone about not imposing burdens on Illinois taxpayers to finance the dreams of billionaire business owners. He said the same governor who championed Rivian, the Chinese Communist Party-backed EV battery plant in Manteno, and now Rural King has no philosophical objection to using public tools to help private businesses. His objection was never principled. It was about the Bears not playing the game correctly by sending players to Springfield and making legislators feel important.
McLaughlin said the deeper problem Proft identified is the one that actually needs to be fixed. The reason every business of significant size feels compelled to seek a special deal from Springfield is that the underlying tax and regulatory environment is so punitive and unpredictable that you cannot make a normal business case for being in Illinois without one. The kleptocracy, as McLaughlin called it without prompting, sets up the rules in a way that advantages those who can hire lobbyists and work the system, and disadvantages the small business owner who cannot. The solution is not to block individual deals but to change the underlying rules that make those deals necessary.
On the political prospects for his proposal, McLaughlin said he has no indication that Pritzker likes it or that House Speaker Welch and Senate President Harmon are ready to take it up, but said he believes the rest of the legislative caucus now understands that Chicago is out of the picture. The previous mega-bills were structured partly to buy Chicago-area legislative votes by including enough citywide provisions to generate support. Mayor Brandon Johnson’s comment that Arlington Heights could not handle the weight of the crowds coming to the stadium, a statement McLaughlin compared to Congressman Hank Johnson’s concern about Guam capsizing, may have inadvertently clarified for everyone that Chicago’s political leadership has no interest in facilitating a deal. That simplifies the legislative math considerably. He said he will take his name off the proposal if someone wants to steal it and run with it, and that his personal goal is a short train ride from Barrington Hills to a finished stadium five years from now.